Strategic Brilliance
by Lonicera Japonica
Summary: Fights among the ranks of CP9 are not uncommon, but this one in particular is a little out of the ordinary. And when Kaku wants vengeance, he strikes like a hammer. Jyabura's going to be feeling that one in the morning.


Two Cipher Pol 9 agents were fighting, which was not an unusual occurrence by a long shot. Also unexceptional was that one of them was Jyabura. What _was_ different about this one was that the other was Kaku, who was not prone to get into shouting matches with anyone, and when he did they were normally somewhat reserved and lacking the pure, driven fury that seemed to be going on in this case. But what they were fighting about was less important than the events that transpired roughly halfway into the dispute.

"It was all your fault!" Jyabura accused, and shoved Kaku backward. Kaku shoved back.

"_My_ fault? You seem to be forgetting that you were the one who—"

"You know what? It doesn't even matter whose fault that part was, because you fucked it all up in the first place!"

"Is that so? Well, if you hadn't thought you were so damn smart and gone in with all guns metaphorically blazing, we wouldn't have had to bash the goddamn wall in and none of that would have happened!"

"Whose plan was it? It was your fucking plan!"

"That was not part of my plan! You made a _mockery_ of my plan! And then you tried to blame it on _me_!"

"I can't help it if you have the planning skills of a retarded monkey, can I? And you can't explain anything for shit! How the hell was I supposed to know what you meant!?"

"Oh, I don't know, basic listening skills!? Where were you in the third grade, you blithering moron? Actually, that's something you don't even need education for and you _still_ screwed it up!"

"That's it," Jyabura began, rolling his sleeves up in preparation to go in with all guns metaphorically blazing for the second time in as many days, but he never got the chance because that was the exact moment that the door opened and the argument was interrupted by the local harbinger of doom and ugly rumors.

"Chapapa, what are you two fighting about?" Fukurou asked, leaning into the room in anticipation of any information that might make for juicy gossip. Kaku thought about this for exactly two seconds: whatever he said or did next would be all over the island by morning, which was precisely the reason that Jyabura was clearly in the process of a good mental floundering. What scheme could he concoct within the space of the next .02 seconds that would be sure to make this as bad for Jyabura as possible?

The answer was obvious. Granted, it may have been obvious simply because it was constructed roughly and in less than a second, but it was sure to be the perfect move, in some fashion. Anyway, Kaku didn't consider what he was doing too deeply until _after_ he had lunged forward, grabbed Jyabura by the neck and kissed him so hard that there would later be a bruised and slightly bloody lower lip as sore reminder of the incident.

It was not planned, and it was not nice. It was actually less of a kiss than a small-scale violent mauling performed orally, and he jabbed Jyabura in the side of the face with his nose before getting properly situated, and when he stepped back he spit on the floor and rubbed his mouth off with his sleeve to rid it of wolf germs, but it worked.

It worked in that Fukurou had seen it. He'd seen it very clearly, and everyone on the entire island was going to hear about it in lurid detail.

It took a stunned and gruesome second for Jyabura to catch on, at which point he glanced toward the door (occupied by Fukurou and the slow zippered grin spreading across his face like a jagged, metallic prelude to many unspeakable horrors) and then back at Kaku, who looked immensely satisfied but for the slight grimace he wore due to having just swapped spit with someone whom he duly considered a total imbecile.

"_You bastard_," Jyabura said, with something approaching horrified awe. Even in the throes of well-deserved and slightly panicked hatred, he had to admit that it had been a strategically brilliant move. (A parasitic portion of Jyabura's brain also managed to suggest, while most of his mental capabilities were down for the count, that he would have to brush his teeth seven times a day for the next week.)

Kaku crossed his arms and smiled in a particularly nasty fashion that he had picked up from Lucci in his earlier years on the team. He'd never had much cause to use it before now, but damned if it wasn't the perfect moment. Judging by the rage that blossomed on his opponent's face upon its employment, he might have to put it to use more often.

He wanted to fire off a line at that point, something acerbic and witty, but he felt it might ruin the moment. So he kept silent and merely affected an icy stare. The next second, Jyabura barreled into him full-force and a brawl that pointedly did not involve mouth parts in any way (except for one bit, some time later, when they had resorted to animal forms and Jyabura went for the neck with his fangs) erupted in a fantastic blur, but by that point Fukurou had already cackled in triumph and was halfway out of the building.

By morning, everyone knew, right down to the park squirrels and the pencil pushers in the accountancy department. Jyabura was stuck doing what could accurately have been described as "damage control" for weeks, but he felt that he was at least a little avenged because not only did Kaku have apparent fang marks on the side of his neck, the cafeteria girls kept asking him if it was a hickey and inquiring in innocent tones who it was from.

Fukurou was, needless to say, immeasurably pleased with himself.


End file.
